Realizing Seamless Interaction: a Cognitive Agent Architecture for Virtual and Smart Environments

We propose a cognitively motivated vertically layered two-pass agent architecture for realizing responsiveness, reactivity, and pro-activeness of smart objects, smart environments, virtual characters, and virtual place controllers, that is controllers for lighting and weather conditions. Being cognitively motivated, our approach aims to respect the cognitive demands of a human being, in order to deliver an adequate human-computer interface to ubiquitous and virtual environments. The vertically layered two-pass architecture allows to realize reaction within a certain time frame, as necessary for generating responsiveness and reactivity required for natural interaction, while at the same time providing a layer for further processing of information for creating pro-active, intelligent responses.